There has already been a lot of information and discussion posted here and elsewhere about TransLink’s early planning for the Broadway Line. Here’s my Globe story today, which has a bit more reaction and commentary from various observers and TransLink’s new planning guy, Mike Shiffer, the public point man on this.

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Public-policy nerds, transit buffs, anxious Broadway merchants, anxious off-Broadway residents: start your engines. TransLink held its first quiet stakeholders’ meeting Thursday to introduce the tentative six options for Broadway rapid transit. As people kept reminding me, these aren’t fixed in stone. The idea is to put preliminary ideas out there to get public feedback and [...]

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In case anyone missed it, the region’s politicians are buzzing with anxiety about what the province has in mind in terms of paying for the Evergreen Line. It’s difficult to imagine what is getting cooked up in Victoria, given how many options the province has already rejected, so people have taken to guessing and worrying. [...]

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Talking to all the parties involved in trying to resolve TransLink’s financial mess is starting to remind me of sitting at the dinner table every night with your about-to-divorce parents. They keep insisting everything is fine and they’re having long constructive talks about some differences they’ve been having. But then you overhear them exchanging bitter [...]

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It was a busy day at council, but I was working on another project and then, later in the afternoon, ended up SkyTraining it out to Metrotown for yet more news breaking there: the province’s announcement that it is reviewing the governance, finances and jurisdiction of our two transportation agencies. Then, after getting the info [...]

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Vancouver city staff have unequivocally indicated that they don’t support the project that PCI’s Andrew Grant is proposing for next door to the new Marine Drive SkyTrain station, a mixed-used development with two towers — one market condos, one rental — office space, a cineplex and a plaza. Head city planner Brent Toderian emphasized that [...]

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The vehicle levy, now known as the transportation improvement levy, is back on the table, for those who didn’t know. Metro mayors, who have to decide by October whether to approve a substantially improved new transit system — on that Premier Gordon Campbell said they were going to build — are struggling to figure out [...]

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Here’s my latest on the Canada Line/Susan Heyes decision, which looks at the previous big case that went down in B.C. between an agency building a public project and people who felt that they’d suffered as a result.

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I got a copy of a letter last week from the Fraser Valley Regional Library board that expressed an anxiety felt by many out there. It began: Over the past few weeks the Board of Fraser Valley Regional Library, along with other libraries across the province were concerned to hear rumors over possible significant reductions [...]

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Faced with mounting bills at TransLink and no way of paying them except to keep going back to transit fares and property taxes, the region’s mayors have decided to make transit funding a campaign issue. They’re holding their (required) in-camera meeting tomorrow to talk about their plan to ask for some of the millions in [...]

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